The invention is based on a valve with a valve housing and inlet and outlet conduits, as well as a moveable lifting rod, one end of which discharges into an actuator. The valve further includes a valve member that is secured to the lifting rod and cooperates with at least one valve seat.
Such valves are known, for instance from German Patent Disclosure DE 197 53 575 A1. The valve described in DE 197 53 575 A1 is a magnetic bypass valve for a fluid-regulated heating or cooling system. Two valve members secured to a lifting rod of the valve regulate the flow between one inlet conduit and two outlet conduits; one of these outlet conduits assumes the function of a bypass conduit in the heating and cooling loop. One disadvantage of the valve described in DE 197 53 575 A1 is the great structural length of the valve, which claims a correspondingly large amount of installation space for the valve.
A further disadvantage of the valve described in DE 197 53 575 A1 is that in such valves, the valve member that controls the flow is itself an obstacle to the flow in the valve and thus affects the flow cross section in the region of the valve seat. One possible known solution to this problem is to increase the diameter of the outlet conduit of the valve. Enlarging the outlet conduit in turn means enlarging the installation volume required for the valve. Another disadvantage is that in that case the inlet conduit and the outlet conduit of the valve have different diameters. This requires the use of different connection hoses for the valve, which unnecessarily complicates the system.
In seeking to overcome this latter problem of the connection diameters, it is naturally possible first to enlarge the diameter of the outlet conduit and then keep the flow cross section around the valve member constant and then reduce the diameter again to the desired hose size. Not only does this rather contrived embodiment means a complex and thus expensive construction; inevitably it also means an increase in the structural length of the valve, with the familiar consequences in terms of the installation volume for the valve.
The described adaptation of the flow cross section of the valve is inconvenient, complex and thus too expensive for mass production.
The valve of the invention has the advantage, among others, that the structural length of the valve and along with it the installation volume of the valve can be reduced.
The valve according to the invention as proposed here opens in such a way that the valve cone emerges from the valve housing. On the one hand, this reduces the structural length of the valve, and at the same time it also offers the possibility of enlarging the flow diameter in the region of the valve cone. A complicated adaptation of the cross section inside the valve housing, which was previously necessary to adapt the flow cross section in the valve, becomes superfluous.
The valve seat of the valve of the invention is advantageously mounted on one end of the valve housing. As a result, upon opening of the valve, the valve member can move out of the valve housing and into an existing connection hose.
The connection hose of the valve leading to the other components of the applicable system is utilized, in the valve according to the invention, to give the valve member the necessary space upon opening: When the valve of the invention opens, the valve member moves out of the valve housing and into the connection hose that has been slipped over the outlet conduit. The connection hose seated on the outlet conduit provides an increase in cross section, which is utilized in the valve of the invention to make a correspondingly increased flow volume available in the region of the opened valve member. It is thus possible to attain that the flow cross section of the medium flowing through the valve is approximately the same in the region of the valve member as the flow cross section upstream of the valve member. The thus essentially constant flow volume in the valve minimizes the pressure drop across the valve. An excessive pressure drop across the valve is something that should be avoided.
Since in the valve housing itself no adaptation of the flow volume has to be made, the construction of the valve can be kept relatively simple. In particular, it is possible to dispense with an enlargement in the outlet conduit diameter of the valve for increasing the flow cross section in the region of the valve member. The valve is thus simplified markedly, since the requisite subsequent re-reduction in the diameter to adapt the connection cross sections can also be dispensed with. Thus the valve of the invention allows the use of hose material of only a single diameter, or makes complicated and expensive cross-sectional adaptations, which can also cause a pressure change across the valve, unnecessary.
The valve seats of the valve can be made integrally in the valve housing, which represents an additional simplification in the structure and thus a further reduction in the production cost of the valve of the invention. In particular, the valve seat can be disposed on the end of the valve housing. Depending on the design of the valve member, it then emerges to a greater or lesser extent from the valve housing upon opening of the valve, or in an extreme case does not emerge at all.
The valve of the invention, which when there is a flow around the valve cone shifts the requisite increase in valve conduit diameter into the connection hose itself, thus assures the requisite flow cross section while at the same time reducing the structural length of the valve.